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Isla Vista shooter convinced cops he was OK. He wasn't

By Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Brian KnowltonNew York Times

Posted:
05/25/2014 12:01:00 AM CDT

Updated:
05/25/2014 09:31:13 PM CDT

The gunman involved in a killing spree in Southern California on Friday night was able to convince sheriff's deputies who visited him in April that he was not a threat to himself or to others, the sheriff of Santa Barbara County, Bill Brown, said Sunday morning.

The gunman, identified as Elliot O. Rodger, 22, did not meet the criteria for an involuntary hold when deputies visited him as part of a welfare check April 30, Brown said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." The deputies were acting on the complaints of Rodger's mother, who was alarmed by videos he had posted online.

"They found him to be apparently shy, timid, polite, well-spoken," Brown said. "He explained to the deputies that this was a misunderstanding," and that while he was having some social problems they were unlikely to continue.

"He was able to convince them that he was not at that point a danger to himself or anyone else," the sheriff said.

In his manifesto, which he called "My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger," Rodger said of the visit by officers: "If they had demanded to search my room ... that would have ended everything. For a few horrible seconds I thought it was all over. When they left, the biggest wave of relief swept over me."

Rodger, a college student who posted videos about his anger against women for rejecting him, was found dead with a bullet wound to his head after the attacks Friday.

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The police said that he had apparently taken his own life.

Police said Rodger killed six people and wounded 13 others in the small town of Isla Vista, Calif. He stabbed three men to death in his apartment and shot and killed three students as he drove to several locations in the town, the police said.

"Obviously looking back on this, it's a very tragic situation, and we certainly wish that we could turn the clock back and maybe change some things," Brown said on the CBS program "Face the Nation." "But at the time that the deputies interacted with him, he was able to convince them that he was OK."

The streets of Isla Vista were extremely quiet early Sunday morning, save for a few bicyclists and news crews. The town was pockmarked with remnants of the shooting, like the broken glass of a storefront in the middle of town. A pile of flowers and candles sat on the lawn of Alpha Phi sorority house, where the shooting began. A sign written in red marker stated that the sorority would not speak about the shooting.

Thousands of students attended a candlelight vigil on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara on Saturday night, walking together to a park in Isla Vista.

At Rodger's apartment complex, a row of candles had been laid outside. But residents mostly remained indoors.

"People are just staying inside," said Connor Brossart, 20, who was staying with a friend who lived in the apartment complex. "It's hard to deal with. They're trying to work out what they can in their own heads."

Brown, on "Face the Nation," said that the deputies who had visited Rodger in response to concerns raised by his family were not the only professionals who had not understood the extent of the man's problems.

"It's very apparent that he was able to convince many people for many years that he didn't have this deep, underlying obvious mental illness that also manifested itself in this terrible tragedy," Brown said, adding that Rodger had been "able to fly under the radar."

While Rodger had received mental health treatment and counseling, he had neither been institutionalized nor held involuntarily for treatment, the sheriff said. "And those are the two triggers that actually would have made him a prohibited person in terms of a firearms purchase. So he was able, sadly, to obtain those three firearms" legally.

Brown said the deputies who visited Rodger "probably" spoke to him about the three handguns he had bought last year but added, "I'm not sure an actual weapons check was conducted."

The police have identified three students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who were killed: Katherine Breann Cooper, 22, of Chino Hills, Calif.; Veronika Elizabeth Weiss, 19, of Westlake Village, Calif.; and Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez, 20, of Los Osos, Calif.

The two women were killed across the street from the Alpha Phi sorority house after Rodger knocked on the door but was unable to enter the house. Michaels-Martinez was killed while he was eating at a nearby delicatessen.

On Sunday, police identified the three people killed inside Rodger's apartment: Cheng Yuan Hong, 20, of San Jose, Calif., George Chen, 19, of San Jose; and Weihan Wang, 20, of Fremont, Calif.

Sheriff's officials had mentioned at a Saturday press conference that Rodger contacted authorities to report his roommate had allegedly his stolen candles. Santa Barbara District Attorney Joyce Dudley said Hong was that roommate.

Hong was charged with petty theft, and Dudley said he pleaded guilty.

Chen was listed on the lease for the apartment along with Hong and Rodger.

Investigators were trying to determine whether Wang was also a roommate or was visiting at the time of the attack.

The shooting revived the debate over gun control that had surged amid public outrage over the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012. Despite a major push by the Obama administration, a gun initiative fell short of the needed votes.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation" that he hoped the shooting would "provide an impetus to bring back measures that would keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people who are severely troubled or deranged, like this young man was."

The legislation that failed after the Newtown shooting, he said, might have made a difference in the way California authorities were able to respond to someone like Rodger.

Blumenthal said that a resurrected version of the legislation might need to be retooled with a focus on mental health care, "which is a point where we can agree that we need more resources."

A Republican senator, John Thune of South Dakota, concurred on the point about improving mental health care.

"I think that's something on which there is agreement, and that's where we ought to be focusing our efforts," he said, also on CBS.